View full sizeThomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerIssac Knowles, a Boys and Girls Clubs of America member, recites a rap-style poem about his urban world to an audience and panel attending a forum on violence Friday at the Boys and Girls Club of America.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- There are models in place to attack the problems of youth violence, but the solutions aren't easy and won't be accomplished quickly, a representative of the World Health Organization says.

Marilyn Rice addressed an audience of several hundred people Friday during a forum sponsored by the city of Cleveland as part of its fledgling effort to add the problems of youth violence to its Healthy Cleveland Initiative.

Rice sees violence as an outgrowth of poor economic conditions and a lack of opportunity.

"It's something you can treat, but you need to change the conditions in which people live," she said.

The World Health Organization has created a violent prevention model that includes offering parenting classes, improving educational opportunities for children, reducing drug and alcohol use, getting guns off the street and changing the societal and cultural norms that support violence.

"The most important thing is think collaboratively," Rice said.

A number of speakers at Friday's forum at the Broadway Avenue Boys & Girls Club echoed her sentiment about working more cooperatively.

Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said the social and economic conditions that breed violence will remain a problem and that the community cannot afford to waste time and money with redundant efforts.

Dettelbach also buttressed the case that City Council members and Mayor Frank Jackson's administration have been making that business leaders need to become more involved in stemming violence.

That's not just a morale responsibility, Dettelbach said. It is an economic one as well. Allowing thousands of children to walk the streets of Cleveland physically and mentally wounded by the effects of violence is "a recipe for disaster."

"We have to turn that around," Dettelbach said. "Businesses are not going to locate to a community that they feel is an unsafe place."

During a panel discussion, two trauma surgeons -- Dr. Edward Barksdale from Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital and Dr. Jeffrey Claridge of MetroHealth Medical Center -- spoke about the large number of knife and gunshot wounds.

Claridge said studies have shown that more than one-third of people who are shot and wounded are likely to be shot again within five years.

"People who get shot, they think it's no big deal," Claridge said.

Barksdale said he sees the loss of hope among young people.

"In our society, we don't protect children," he said.

Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said law enforcement helped reduce crime during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1990s with aggressive enforcement. But those efforts, he said, have turned the children of those arrested and imprisoned into a generation that lack respect for police, authority and, especially, themselves.

"Those are the babies who were left behind," McGrath said. "Did we create this? I don't know. But I know we have to address it."

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